With the NAMA awards now over for another year, winners are celebrating and potential future recipients are creating the arts and entertainment initiatives that may give them NAMA success next year and in years that follow.
The director of this year’s NAMA awards was well-known broadcaster Napoleon Nyanhi, who several years ago attended several international awards events, like the BET Experience and MTV Awards, through sponsorship by MultiChoice Africa.
Here he chats about himself, his experiences and his ambition to encourage excellence on the Zimbabwean arts and entertainment scene:
| Q: | Q: Who is Napoleon Nyanhi?A: I am a broadcaster who is also passionate about training future broadcasters, as well as a speaker and entrepreneur who has recently become an event manager. I have been in media production for 14 years, with career experience that includes voice overs, TV production, TV and radio presenting radio station management. In 2018 I started an initiative to educate, expose and empower talented young people as they seek to realise their ambitions dream of being broadcasters. Q: How was your experience as NAMA director?A: Being NAMA event director was a tough job. I was in charge of mobilising funding and leading the team of 88 people who worked on the event. In the end it was a worthwhile investment of my time and effort as the event was said by a number of people and publications to be the best such event. It taught me many lessons, including the need for patience and for faith in people. Q: What experiences did you enjoy at the BET Experience and MTV Awards?A: Every time I’ve had an opportunity to travel outside Zimbabwe I have made a point of learning as much as possible about broadcasting and show business. Two of the most impactful engagements were trips organised with the help of Multichoice and Viacom. Multichoice facilitated my 2016 trip to Johannesburg for the BET Experience, a highly enjoyable and fascinating experience that gave me glimpse into how to create not an event but an experience. Between 2014 and 2016 Viacom facilitated my attendance at the MTV Africa Music Awards in South Africa and the MTV Europe Music Awards in Italy. Here I learned how ‘proper’ awards ceremony are run. I adopted ideas and experiences into implemented action at the NAMAs. Q: Should Zimbabweans who get such opportunities to travel and see events in action take them up?A: Yes, most certainly. I found that opportunities given to me life-changing, perspective-shifting and creatively engaging. I would encourage anyone who gets a chance to work with MultiChoice to not only grab that opportunity but to learn and apply, for the benefit of local creative activities.Q: What projects are you working on?A: I am at present conducting my annual radio presenters master class, a forum for coaching talented young Zimbabweans and helping them become professional radio broadcasters. I am also creating and moving forward with a tree-planting foundation launched in December, called The Birth Tree Foundation. I was recently accepted into the Chevening Africa Media Freedom Fellowship and will be traveling to the UK for eight weeks in the middle of this year to take this up. Key this year will be planning for the next NAMA awards, which will be for content in 2020, #NAMA20. Q: What do you see as your future role?A: I want to help tell the African story and sell the beauty and power of people through the media. My hope is to be a conduit, a beacon if I may say. There is so little done and so much to do. The opportunities in Zimbabwe’s creative field are many and varied, and it is important for artistes and corporates to collaborate. We need more corporates to believe and invest in ideas, even when they have never been tried and tested. That’s where the magic comes from |
